Hospital coverage for tuberculosis in the Franco dictatorship, 1936-1977

Abstract

Tuberculosis is one of the diseases with the highest mortality rates in Spain in much of the 20th century, and one that has lasted the longest until its incidence has been reduced. During the first Franco regime, it was the leading cause of death in the Spanish population. Not even the efforts of the National Antituberculosis Board to increase the number of sanatoriums of the National Antituberculosis Board managed (Patronato Nacional Antituberculoso) to reduce mortality from this cause. The change in trend came hand in hand with other factors, such as the introduction into the country of streptomycin, an antibiotic that was very expensive to obtain during the first years of the dictatorship, or the introduction of hygiene and vaccination campaigns. The last effort of the Franco regime to curb this disease was the creation of the National Plan for the Eradication of Tuberculosis, whose results of which are questionable. The objective of this work is to influence the quantification and evolution of the National Plan sanatoriums, outline their role in the anti-tuberculosis strategy in this period, and analyze the decline and change in functionality of many of them in the last years of Francoism.